Sunday, 23 July 2006

Barbeque Chaos

Last weekend I suggested that as the weather has been so nice, we should have a barbeque sometime the following weekend. When my Mum mentioned it to Dad, his eyes lit up with anticipation. The reason for his enthusiasm was mainly due to the fact that he suffers, quite badly now, from Multiple Sclerosis and rarely gets out to meet people. He then asked if my Wife’s Dad had also been invited, which of course he had. When our two Dad’s get together it’s impossible to shut them up. They could talk continuously for weeks if left to their own devices. Christmas is always entertaining.

After a few phone calls here and there, the date was set for yesterday evening at 4pm (Saturday).

I spent the morning cleaning the barbeque and made the grim discovery that I’d failed to clean it after it’s last use, which would probably been last summer. Much scrubbing later and it was as good as new.

Fast forward to the evening and I was merrily blacking poor defenceless sausages, burgers and pieces of chicken, while my beautiful assistant (my Wife) was preparing various salady type stuff in the kitchen. Our guest were all seated on the patio yakking away 19 to the dozen. I can only assume that they were looking forward to receiving the nicely charred objects from the barbeque while they chatted.

Just as the afore mentioned salady type nutriments were placed on the table and the last un-identifiable object was been extracted from the barbeque, the heavens opened. Then ensued a mad scrabble of items from the table and a dash into the dinning room. The timing was almost prefect to within a second.

As we all stood like sardines around the dining table, I was complimented on the quality of my blacked meats. It was difficult to decide whether they were just being polite or genuinely meant it as the alcohol was working nicely. Although it was noted that all except one piece of chicken was consumed fairly swiftly. Even that wasn’t wasted as out cat polished it of later in the evening.

Why is it that we persist with barbequing perfectly edible food to a charred crisp when we have a fully functional kitchen just feet away? Stupid isn’t, but we still do it time and time again!

“At twelve noon the natives swoon and no further work is done,But mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.”Noel Coward – Mad dogs and Englishmen From the musical revue "The Third Little Show" (1924)

2 comments:

How come you didn't know that barbeque gatherings generally attract rain? And as to why we barbeque and blacken meat instead of cooking it to perfection indoors -- I believe a retro-gene kicks in -- a remnant in our dna from caveman days. "Ugh, ugh, must eat burnt meat outside over fire."

Thanx for stopping by my blog. I wish I'd known that bit about gravy not being good for keyboards a bit earlier. I might have been a touch more careful where I tossed my plate when I tripped over the cat.

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